Product Description
It was the children who saw - and felt - what made the town so horribly different. In the storm drains and sewers 'It' lurked, taking the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. As the children grow up and move away, the horror of 'It' is buried deep - until they are called back.

Amazon.com Review
They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they were grown-up men and women who had gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them could withstand the force that drew them back to Derry, Maine to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name. What was it? Read It and find out...if you dare!

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 870 reviews)

Memorable characters...

King weaves another tale of terror that follows children into their adulthood. A beast that haunts a tight-knit group of kids and returns years later to reap vengence against the adults they have become. The character development is awesome. It's as if I know these people. The storyline is great...until the end. I'll leave it at that. No spoilers here. Almost a 5 star.
November 24, 2008

King Never Disappoints

Well, every author disappoints at SOME point in their career, but this is not that point for author Stephen King. Though the title is simply one word, it conveys all the eerie simplicity of the book itself.

The story jumps between contemporary times (1985, contemporary when the book was written and published) and the horrifying experiences of seven friends' childhoods, in the summer of 1958. While most books of this intensity cover spans of 20 years in epic form, this book takes place over the course of just three months.

Seven 11-year-old kids battle the unspeakable evil that has permeated their small Maine town of Derry. King captures the creepy feel of small New England towns in a way that grips the reader, making it impossible to put the book down even as the descriptions grow grisly and nightmarish. These seven youngsters are brought together in adulthood to repeat their fantastic journey and defeat that same evil once and for all, if they can recapture the magic of childhood. A task every adult in the world attempts at least once.

Most of Stephen King's fans know he writes himself into almost every story. Some part of him finds its way into the characters and places, giving the reader a glimpse of the man behind the book. In "It", we see not only a glimpse, but an entire novel of King himself, played out in the twists and turns of his own fantasies. This fact makes the book all the more haunting, chilling, and terrifying.

While I would recommend this to anyone who wants a good long scare (it takes a solid week to read through, as it DOES jump around a bit), I would not recommend this or any other King novel to those young enough to still think of that favorite four-letter-word as "the f-word". Like all his other works, It does not scrimp on the foul language, nor does it balk at concepts no child should entertain (physical and sexual abuse, kids smoking, grisly deaths, not to mention the psychological ramifications of a demonic clown that can change into any monster it wants).
November 23, 2008

Classic Stephen King

After The Stand, this is probably King's best novel. It's a classic masterpiece and still one of my favorites after all these years.
November 17, 2008

It's a great read

It is probably one of Stephen King's longest books. It's satisfyingly short title, draws the reader in. The book mostly focuses on all of our most nurtured fears, clowns.
The book begins with meeting Pennywise, the dancing clown, and thus finding out exactly how evil It is. The story tells us about a group of kids who joined together as friends to play and later to stop the evil destroying the small New England town.
The book was a page-turner and never stopped being interesting. The fact of how startling it was kept me turning the pages. It was surprising how cruel Stephen King was to all the characters. It's characters seemed so real. It's villain was interesting because It's so evil. The hero and heroine have good motives and are interesting as the villain. Each of the characters seemed full of detail and the descriptions of the characters seemed to make them completely real.
The story is split into parts about when they were in their childhood and when they were called back in the town 27 years later. The chapters never seemed too long or too short.
I think this book was a real page-turner and taught me not too mess with anything that kills children.

November 05, 2008

Angieville: IT

I preface this review by stating (somewhat sheepishly) that this is my first horror novel. Honestly? I've always secretly longed to read a Stephen King book, but I never knew where to jump in. So I contented myself with reading On Writing and his book reviews, admiring the talent from afar, so to speak.

IT begins with a great first line:

"The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years--if it ever did end--began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain."

We are soon introduced to a boy named Bill who stutters and his cute little brother Georgie who, even I can tell, doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of making it out of this chapter alive. A few pages later I feel certain I should never have opened this book. There's a freaking clown in the storm drain and I find myself truly creeped out and begging Georgie not to go near the storm drain. Just let the paper boat go and walk away, Georgie!

But he doesn't.

I won't go into the plot too deeply except to say that the story alternates between a series of seminal events in 1958 and again in 1985. The first half depicts the cosmic coming together of seven eleven-year-old kids. Six boys and one girl, self-proclaimed Losers all of them. A stutterer, a wisecracker, a hypochondriac, a fatboy, a birder, a black kid, and a tough girl. These seven form a united front against a trio of unusually vicious bullies. But slowly, and with an almost spine tingling sense of inevitability, they realize they've been brought together for a larger purpose than warding off Henry Bowers and his cronies. Soon they're all in and there's no turning back. Not that any one of them would be able to turn their backs on Stuttering Bill anyway. He is the real heart of the story. The one who never backs down. The one the others would gladly walk through fire for.

It's difficult for me to tell you how much I enjoyed this book. I was hoping I would like it, but, like a blind date, I was a little nervous. Merely crossing my fingers for a good time, you know? Out of nowhere, I fell in love. I mean these kids are So Cool. Work their way into your heart and break it sort of cool. They are outcasts struggling to avoid annihilation not only at the hands of their peers but at the clawlike hands of an apocalyptic evil that has held their town in its grasping grip since time immemorial. I didn't stand a chance. I fell in love with them, with their desperate jokes, with the summer of 1958, and with the interlocking charm and horror with which King shapes his tale. But most of all, I fell in love with Bill. Bill with his glorious silver bike and his burning determination to avenge his brother. I loved the quiet, unassuming way he gathered the other misfits together and made them a part of something important, something noble.

I can't believe I waited this long to read IT. I stayed up nights reading, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds, looking for something orange and silver creeping up behind me, scared to the tips of my toes but unable to put it down.
October 31, 2008

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